- Talk about a weapon of ass destruction.
Today, the nightmarish trenches of World War I are more than 100 years in the past. Yet, the horrors of the Great War can still rear their head in the most unexpected places.
For example, inside a young Frenchman’s anus.
A 24-year-old man recently went to a hospital after getting a bit too kinky. He admitted to the doctors that he’d inserted something in his butt, and he couldn’t get it out.
The surprisingly routine operation of surgical sex toy removal, however, quickly took an unexpected turn. Our hero hadn’t told the doctors what he had been playing with, and it turned out to be a WWI artillery shell.
What’s more, it was authentic and active — meaning it could’ve potentially gone off at any moment.
There was nothing the doctors could do but call the police and bomb squad. They evacuated the hospital, and the surgeons completed an extremely tense operation before the round could be declared safe.
The man was reportedly still hospitalized but expected to make a full recovery. But he’s not in the clear yet, as he may be charged with owning illegal live ammunition.
‘A Large Object’
On January 31, an unidentified 24-year-old Frenchman dragged himself to the Rangueil Accident and Emergency unit in Toulouse, southwestern France. The guy told the staff that he was in quite a lot of pain, and he boldly came clean with the cause.
He had shoved something big up his bottom, and he couldn’t get it out.
“He was in a state of extreme discomfort, having inserted a large object up his rectum,” a police source described, according to The Sun.
You’d be surprised how often this kind of stuff happens at hospitals. Just ask your nurse or doctor friends — we bet they have some stories to share.
According to French newspapers, the doctors at Rangueil are “accustomed to treating victims injured during sexual games.” So, they put the guy on a stretcher and ferried him to an operating room for immediate routine surgery.
However, the man had neglected to tell the doctors what exactly he was carrying in his body cavity.
“Emergency surgery was carried out, and the object was found to be an artillery shell dating back to the First World War,” the police said.
To be needlessly specific, the shell was an Imperial German 37mm round, roughly 8 inches long and 1.5 inches in diameter. Based on its caliber and stamp date of 1918, the late-war shell was likely intended to be fired out of an anti-aircraft or anti-tank gun.
This round, however, had never been fired. It was still intact, unexploded, and active — and potentially just as deadly as 108 year ago.
Category A Munitions
The discovery of the possibly active artillery shell put a quick stop to the operation and everything else at the hospital. Staff immediately called the police, and they sprang into action.
Police officers, firefighters, and a military explosive disposal squad rushed to the hospital. All patients and staff (except those needed to pull the shell out of the man) were evacuated, and the fire department set up a safety perimeter around the hospital.
Over what must’ve been a very delicate operation, the surgeons extracted the shell from our guy’s rectum. Fortunately, bomb experts successfully defused the explosive, and the hospital could return to regular operation soon after.
The shell-shocked man is currently still recovering from the operation, and according to French media, he should be no worse for wear. Yet, his troubles aren’t over.
State prosecutors are currently considering pressing charges against the man for possessing and handling “category A munitions.” After all, the shell was active, so despite being more than a century old, it falls under France’s laws prohibiting civilians from possessing military-grade weaponry.
A National Pastime
It’s not uncommon for civilians in France to possess old artillery rounds, however. The country was the site of some of the fiercest combat during both World Wars.
Dozens of pieces of old ammunition surface every year at farms, construction sites, and anywhere where people dig into the ground in a phenomenon called the Iron Harvest. Additionally, many WWI veterans received defused artillery shells as commemorative trophies from the government.
It’s apparently also not uncommon for the French to shove those old shells up their butts. A virtually identical incident happened in 2022.
In that case, an 88-year-old gentleman took himself to a hospital with a WWI artillery round inside his rectum. His case, though, was more impressive in a way. The old man’s shell was more than twice the diameter of the 24-year-old’s.
“An apple, a mango, or even a can of shaving foam… We are used to finding unusual objects inserted where they shouldn’t be. But a shell? Never!” the doctors exclaimed at the time.
It’s not just the French experimenting with dangerous toys, either. In 2021, a British man also caused a scene by showing up at a hospital with an anti-tank round in his behind, although his was from World War II.
Seriously, people, don’t put high explosives where the sun doesn’t shine. If you really need to, at least get an actual butt plug that looks so much like a grenade it causes a bomb scare.
Yes, that has happened too.